Heartland (38 page)
That was Cynthia in a nutshell.
Early Friday morning he took the limo back from Fresno. Gerald, the driver, was nowadays in a perpetual sour state, no doubt bitter over his reduction in status. There was no glory in driving a writer. Nor any gossip he could slip to the tabloids. Only a wonderful woman slowly recovering and taking excellent care of her two new baby girls. What entertainment weekly would care about news like that?
Peter arrived at the ranch just as the sun emerged from the eastern hills. Already the place resembled an anthill whose top had been surgically removed. Lots of nervous bugs swarmed. Kip stood on top of the mobile lighting truck, high enough to be seen by all the workers busy sprucing up the place. His arms whirled so fast they resembled faint clouds of pink. Or perhaps lavender. It was hard to tell with the sun rising behind him.
Britt marched over and demanded before Peter had emerged from the limo, “You finish the rewrite?”
“Both scenes. I'll type them up this afternoon and have them to you tomorrow, as promised.”
“What about . . .” Britt stopped when he spotted Kelly and Claire approaching. He asked the ladies, “Where's JayJay?”
“He wanted to spend a while with Skye,” Kelly said. “The horse gets spooked when others are nervous. Like now. So JayJay wanted to curry the horse himself. Settle her down before the press get here.”
Claire asked Peter, “How's the family?”
Just hearing the word in someone else's mouth was reason to grin. “Great. The doctors are releasing her Monday. We've arranged a nurse to come help out.”
Britt was too full of the coming day to share in their pleasure. “I'm still not sure it's a good idea for JayJay to ride in front of the press.”
“The horse will be fine, Britt.”
“What about JayJay?”
“You can count on him,” Kelly said, utterly confident.
“I get the impression something's the matter. But he's not talking. Normally I wouldn't say anything. The work he's done this week, it's . . .”
Kelly glowed. “Good?”
“No. It's outstanding.” Britt shook his head. “The man is a star in the making.”
Peter and Claire shared a look, for they had both seen Kelly's beaming response. Neither needed to say anything. Both knew this was far more than just the standard location romance.
Britt went on, “That's really all I should be thinking about right now. Just getting it down on film. Using whatever he's going through. But, well . . .”
Kelly patted his arm. “You know what? You have the makings of a very good friend.”
“I can't afford the luxury. I'm a director, remember?”
She hugged him. Hard. “I'm glad you're the one leading this shindig. And don't you worry. JayJay is going to be fine.”
Whatever Britt was about to say was cut off by Kip's steam-whistle shriek from on top of the lighting truck. “They're
here
!”
Friday was the day JayJay finally learned the definition of the word
star
.
A star was somebody who smiled so strong it convinced folks to smile along with him. A star was the feller who put his entire life in a little box and locked it away. Just shut the lid down so tight his other life, the one that existed away from the work, was just not there. A star lived for the camera, the lights, the moment, the driving urgent demanding all-consuming call to be totally and utterly
on
.
And that's exactly what JayJay was for this crowd. He was pure-t
on
.
When the woman from the entertainment program took hold of his arm and brought to mind the sucker-fish that clung to the bellies of whales, JayJay did nothing but smile until Kelly stepped over and did that woman thing with her eyes. The thing that offered in no uncertain terms to introduce the woman's lower jaw to the next county, all without saying a word.
He stood by the corral and let the cameras go to town. He brought Skye over and clambered up on the fence rail and stroked the horse's muzzle and answered about sixty dozen totally dead-brained questions. For all the world, like he
enjoyed
it. He rode for a while around the corral, then leaped the fence and headed toward the spring. Then turned back, and kept on smiling, even when Skye had the good sense to resist his urging and tried to aim for the hills. He rode Skye into the barn and curried the horse for the cameras, and let them keep on with their silly questions. JayJay even made out like he was reluctant for the interview session to end when Kip and Ahn came over and led them all away.
A star.
The cameras were everywhere. Stills and television both. The only harsh words came when one of the announcers or their team got in the way of another. Then there were the quick hissy fits of two cats claiming the same stretch of road. JayJay never gave any sign he heard a thing. He couldn't afford to. They filmed everything he did. They filmed him attaching Skye's trailer to his pickup. They kept telling him to look this way or that, smile, hold up a second. Until Ahn was sent over by Britt to tell them he couldn't keep stopping, they had to go shoot the main event. Finally they gathered at the entrance, there must have been three dozen in all, and shot him and Kelly and Claire driving beneath the gates. Four different times.
The press and Centurion's PR team filled three buses. They followed the limos and the trucks and the crew's bus away from the ranch, swinging down through town. There they stopped again for a buffet barbecue spread along one side of Main Street. All the locals invited. The press would hole up there and interview anybody who moved while they set up the wildfire shoot. Britt's idea terrified Centurion's PR staff. Forget having a group of LA city folk standing around when they let go with the flames. The Centurion crew were petrified by the thought of what an entire town might have to say about a group of actors on location. But Britt stomped on their objections all the way up to Martin Allerby's office.
They were an hour into their preparations when Ahn arrived at the shoot and announced, “I wish you could see it. Fifty talking heads trying to accept the fact that there isn't any dirt. No scandals. No hatred between the town and the crew. I must've heard a dozen people actually say into the cameras and the mikes that they'd vote for JayJay Parsons if he had a mind to run for mayor.”
It had been Claire's idea for Ahn to come up. Saying this was what managers did, back their stars in the pinch. Ahn had dressed for the part, a new suit, silk collarless shirt, Italian loafers. He looked like somebody's kid brother with a fresh haircut. Even so, JayJay was glad to see him. “How's the family?”
“Man, my sister is
so
jealous.” If a smile could throw a jaw out of joint, it was this one. “She told me to give you a hug. I said, âHow professional would that look?' ”
“Give her one back from me.”
“Not a chance in this whole wide world. If hugging Minh was needed to up your take next season, I'd have to take a minute out for serious consideration.”
“Yeah, well, I seem to recall a certain brother who blubbered away when he thought his kid sister was hurt.” JayJay pointed at the line of buses snaking up the valley road. “Showtime.”
Britt's commanding-officer mode was stern enough to make even this crowd behave. That and the fact that half of Salton City's ten police officers were on duty as crowd control. Britt stationed the junket on the crest that had been cleared as a press stand. He ordered the junket photographers to get in place, and said it hard enough to make them obey. He brought JayJay and Kelly over in their fire gear. He explained how they were going to light a controlled burn. He brought over one of the two retired fire chiefs who would supervise. The other was down on the other side of the ridge, Britt explained, in the orchard between the burn and the ranch. This emergency backup team was the last line of defense in case things went south. There to save the ranch and the town both.
All the fire crew were retired firefighters. These Hollywood gigs paid thirty times more per diem than they had ever earned in real life. The firemen brought to the shoot the tight no-nonsense attitude of men who knew what was going down and were going to handle it like pros. Two crews, nineteen men in all. Britt explained to the press how this was customary for a location shoot requiring real flames.
At Britt's request, the police chief issued marching orders to the press. The chief's instructions were very simple. Take one step out of the press area, for any reason, and they would be escorted off the land and every bit of their equipment sacrificed to the fire. Accidentally, of course. But they were going to behave. If they felt they were above taking orders, the bus was ready and waiting to ship them back to Salton City.
The press didn't like it one bit. But they got the message.
“Okay,” Britt said. He turned his back on the assembled press and instantly forgot them. A director in full location mode. Able to segment life with a surgeon's dexterity. “Let's make this happen.”
Martin Allerby called his partner from the new cell phone, one of two he had purchased for the occasion. Milo answered on the second ring. Martin asked, “You alone?”
“On my office balcony.”
“It's going down in a couple of hours. Time to disappear.”
“The agent of a star on the rise invited me to a lunch and a private screening. Very hush-hush. I'll be totally unreachable for the rest of the day. You?”
“I'm on my way to Van Nuys. Spending the entire day with our accountants. I'll leave strict orders we're not to be disturbed. Standard ops when we're crunching numbers.”
Milo was quiet for a moment. Martin feared he would ask something inconsequential, such as, were they putting anyone in danger.
Instead, the sales director merely asked, “How much is this costing?”
“You sure you want to know?” Good old Milo.
“Tell me.”
“Think six firemen set for life. No, seven, because the chief required a double helping. No, eight. Our little on-site mole decided to take a cut.” Martin took a choke hold on the steering wheel. “This time tomorrow they'll be shopping for beachfront properties in Bermuda.”
Milo said weakly, “Maybe the bar at this lunch will serve me Valium in a glass.”
“Don't worry about it,” Martin said. “When it's all done but the signing, we'll slip it from the investment account, write it down as part of the deal package.”
“What if it doesn't work?”
“It will work,” Martin said. “It has to.”
P
eter was in the second camera stand with Derek. Peter kept telling himself it wasn't all that high, twenty feet off the ground. And that was true, so long as Peter remained focused in the direction the camera was pointed. But Peter had two little problems doing so. First, the stand was perched upon a hill that rose like a stony mole from the ridgeline. As in, the highest point along the high side of a narrow valley.
The second problem was the real kicker. Which was, the stand's other side hung slightly over the ridge. The ridge Peter tried not to think about. The drop was about sixty-eight thousand feet, or so it seemed to Peter. Straight down a rock face. Peter was certain if he turned around he could stare out over the valley holding the Parsons ranch, over Salton City, and right on out to the ocean a hundred or so miles to the west.
Thinking about how just five skinny poles kept them from tumbling into the abyss left Peter's tummy swooping with the eagles.
He knew there were five poles because he counted them as he climbed the ladder into the stand.
The ladder that had started in the pine forest on the slope's gentler side. The side that masked the drop. The drop Peter hadn't seen until he was up top.
He asked, “You're sure you can trust the carpenters?”
“Relax.” Derek was busy at the portable monitor. He slipped the walkie-talkie from his belt and said, “Britt, it looks real good from this angle.”
About a billion cables snaked up through the ladder-hole, fastened to the stadium-size collection of lights over the stand, to the monitor, and to the camera. Peter asked, “What about the weight of all this gear? Are you sure they took that into account?”
The sound guy, hunched over even more equipment, asked, “What's with him?”
“Nothing. Everything's okay, right, Peter?”
“Maybe I should head on back.”
“You stay put.” Derek vaulted into the camera's hot seat. “They're about to start the burn.”
Ahn's head popped into view. “Britt said I could come watch if it was okay with you.”
“Join the party,” Derek replied, then said into his mike, “Ready to roll.”
“Did the carpenters factor in him too?” Peter asked.
Ahn walked straight to the stand's other side. The side with the view all the way to Maui. “Man, this is just too cool!”
Peter said, “I know those carpenters. They have a bad night, they decide the hammer's too noisy, they skip every other nail.” Peter motioned to Ahn without turning around. “Get on over here. If we fall, let's slide in this direction.”
Ahn asked Derek, “What's the matter with him?”
Derek cast Peter a little grin. “Aw, our fearless writer is just having a slight case of the jitters, is all.”
Peter complained, “I want to live long enough to name our babies.”
“Mork and Mindy work for me.” Derek turned back to the camera and said, “Sound check.”
“Go.”
Derek hit the trigger on his gear and said into the walkie-talkie, “Rolling.”
Britt's voice rose from a stand about a hundred yards away. The echo rolled up from the valley behind Peter like a halloo from the far side. Peter felt his gut swoop again and could not keep back the groan.
Derek said, “Here we go.”
Ahn slipped over beside Peter. “I can't believe I'm actually here.”
